Here’s what I would like to learn from a movie about film critics: What makes them pertinent to the needs of society? Has the self-empowering progress of the blogosphere endangered the future of the profession? Most importantly, what kind of a fascinating loon do you have to be to watch movies all the time?

You will find answers to none of these provocative questions in Gerald Peary’s For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, a light, impact-free survey of talking heads that adds absolutely nothing new to the general perception of the practice. Those viewers whose interest in watching critics talk about themselves parallels the curiosity behind, say, wanting to see an Asian elephant at the zoo won’t find themselves disappointed. (I can see it now: “Oh, so that’s what an A.O. Scott looks like…”) Everyone else may find the content lacking a much-needed edge.

…Read more

The best thing about Alex Holdridge’s In Search of a Midnight Kiss (trailer above) is its conceptual audacity: not only is it a film about walking in L.A., but it devotes much of its screen time to romanticizing corners and aspects of the city well-known to natives but rarely seen on film (and never as the backdrop for meet-cute one-night-stand cinema). As long as it sticks to being a visually stunning love letter to the much-maligned city, an inverse of the L.A. segment of Annie Hall, a filmic rehab from City of Quartz to a city of romantic fantasy––I can totally get on board with it. It’s when the actors open their mouths that I start to have a problem.

…Read more

Answers to the blind items thrown out from my notes on the Moving Image Institute:

“There are certain people who only exist to show up on websites in order to tell you what an idiot you are.” — Matt Zoller Seitz, speaking on the Online Film Criticism panel, about which more later today.

“I don’t see it as a queer movie, other than that a sodomite made it.” –– Filmmaker Tom Kalin, speaking about his upcoming Savage Grace.

“I’m a great Dumbo enthusiast. I think it’s the greatest animated film I’ve ever seen. I like elephants.” — Andrew Sarris. More on his session here.

image via Stop Smiling.

“I’ve been struggling to try to do a memoir,” said Andrew Sarris at the beginning of the Moving Image Institute session with he and fellow critic/wife Molly Haskell. “I haven’t made much progress, so don’t hold your breath.” Not to brag, but anyone who was in that room won’t have to. The Haskell/Sarris Hour (actually, several hours––the discussion continued over dinner, including wine for many of us and a vodka tonic for Sarris) was, for me, both the most purely pleasurable session of the Institute, and the portion of the program that gave me the strongest dose of film cultural-historical education. It all came down through Andrew and Molly’s candid storytelling. MOMI’s David Schwartz more than once credited Sarris for having mastered the lecture-as-stand up comedy, but in our small group, with Haskell at his side snarkily finishing sentences, it felt more like lecture-as-autobiography. With jokes.

…Read more